Bitcoin ATM’s Could Be Coming To A Gas Station Near You

Talking about hosting one of our Bitcoin ATMs. I don’t know anything about them, okay all you need to do is provide the space we install the machine and you get a check each month for the transactions processed. We even handle the customer support Brandon Mintz is the CEO of Bitcoin Depot and atlantes, a company that distributes Bitcoin ATMs across the country.

Machines like his are the only places where you can use paper money to purchase digital currency. So show me how this works tap the screen and click buy coins so we’ll just go ahead and choose the lowest option, if you can buy $20 to $1,000 , so here now it displays how much Bitcoin you’re gonna get, you’re gonna get point zero zero one five two two four three Bitcoin. So it’s about worth about thirteen dollars.

Now what I have in here that’s all right twenty dollars, yeah it’d be worth about thirteen dollars now that’s because Bitcoin Depot took seven of the twenty dollars after markups and fees. He estimates that in total his machines taken tens of millions of dollars every year, a host store he says can expect to make a few hundred bucks a month on average and attract more customers. In the process you put physical money in but then it goes into the space where everything is ephemeral on there there is no physical money is that that seems like it puts you in a unique position right yeah.

it’s definitely interesting how we’re selling digital products but the thing is when you can actually touch this machine and know that there’s a real company behind it versus just a random website that can vanish at any time. it gives you the sense of trust and credibility that this company is legitimate.

The number of Bitcoin ATM machines worldwide has tripled since 2017. There are now more than 3000 according to coin ATM radar, a website that maps them turning cash into crypto hasn’t gone mainstream, as a result not a single person we saw using a Bitcoin Depot ATM would speak with us and several even use profanity to emphasize how little they wanted to be filmed.

That might be because they’re shy or it might be because they’re shady, in the US there’s almost no federal or state monitoring of these transactions which makes it hard to know if they’re a portal for small investors or an easy way to launder money like how many people are coming in and just sticking 20 dollars in.

I don’t have exact metrics on demographics but it’s really diverse, I mean there’s low-income people using the machines because it’s a better source of money transfer than Western Union. There are investors going to the Machine in this area this where customer support and sales go down. We’ve been here for a little over a year now companies like Bitcoin Depot self report suspicious activity to the Financial Crimes enforcement Network.

A bureau within the US Treasury Department created to quote determine emerging trends and methods and money laundering and other financial crimes, but there’s no independent oversight. Bitcoin Depot has 135 machines and 15 states and more than a third of them are in Atlanta including minces.

First machine in a vape store across the street from Georgia Tech number one pillow and I’m sat and watched people who pump 10 grand into that machine. So at a time in two different transactions because they can only do five grand it for per transaction but twice a day and who what kind of people are doing that.

It’s all different kinds of people are I mean it’s it’s a lot of like urban people and I’d say a lot of strippers really it’s gonna get a lot of strippers in here. What about like drugs are people laundering drug money and I mean , I hope not but I mean probably in a statement to vice news.

Bitcoin Depot said quote it’s not a hundred percent avoidable for any company. Bitcoin Depot has outstanding compliance policies and strives to go above and beyond. All know your customer and monitoring requirements at its ATMs is there like a particular time when you have real heavy traffic. I have people waiting at the door from you some days and then I have people banging on the door at 8:15 and after I’ve already closed trying to get in here to use it so it’s it’s all day long.